Back in the mid-70s, DC published a mag called DC Super-Stars in which they published great comics that really didn't fit in any other mag they were publishing at the time. Issue 13, which came out in December, 1976, was made of material that most likely would have been PLOP! #25--if PLOP! hadn't been canceled with ish #24. Best of all, the material is all drawn and/or plotted/written by the uber-talented Senor Aragones. Here's a sampling from that madcap mag. Get your giggle on, Groove-ophile!
I was going to take this to have Sergio sign when I met him a couple of months but I forgot. D'oh!!
ReplyDeleteSergio Aragones stopped working for DC because of work-for-hire contracts in 1976, and actually recounted that when he refused to sign, a DC editor ripped up his paycheck right in front of him. Nice!
ReplyDeleteAt one point PLOP was one of DC's bestselling titles. As I recall, Bob Rozakis said that when DC had a "Comicmobile" truck that he'd drive around selling DC titles on the streets of the New York area, PLOP would consistently be the first title to sell out. So it's hard to imagine that its cancellation was due to low sales. Maybe when Aragones quit DC, they felt that PLOP's sales would plummet without Aragones. Or that they didn't have enough other artists interested in the book to carry it on without him. I felt the quality started to drop after issue 10. But I still love the Dave Manak work, that I saw as on a par with Aragones, some very funny stuff. Among good stuff by other artists and writers.
I suspect this special issue was the remaining inventory of Aragones stories planned to be rationed out across a number of future issues of PLOP, that they just got out of the files in one gigantic issue. Because Aragones generally only did about a third of any PLOP issue. Having an all-Aragones issue was quite a treat.
There's also a 6-page "Comic Book McFiend" story by Manak in AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS 6, May-June 1975, an issue dedicated to Joe Orlando and the Orlando-edited DC mystery line, including PLOP. Also containing unpublished DC mystery pages by Wrightson, Toth, Kaluta and others, as well as Orlando's classic EC story "Judgement Day" from WEIRD FANTASY 18, published in 1953, that many consider the single best story EC ever published.
Infantino, Orlando, Kubert and later Giordano, were all grandmaster artists promoted to editor positions at DC in the 1967-1970 period. Added to the ranks of editors Julius Schwartz and Murray Boltinoff, I think they're the reason DC's line was so good from 1967-1986. They had built a great visual sense to comics storytelling as artists, that served them well as editors, when moved to those editorial positions.